Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

And fresh inhale the spicy sighs That from the weeping buds arise.

When revel reigns, when mirth is high, And Bacchus beams in every eye, Our rosy fillets scent exhale, And fill with balm the fainting gale. There's naught in nature bright or gay, Where roses do not shed their ray. When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes ;1 Young nymphs betray the rose's hue, O'er whitest arms it kindles through. In Cytherea's form it glows, And mingles with the living snows.

The rose distils a healing balm, The beating pulse of pain to calm; Preserves the cold inurned clay," And mocks the vestige of decay: An when, at length, in pale decline, Its florid beauties fade and pine, Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Diffuses odor even in death!

Oh! whence could such a plant have sprung? Listen, for thus the tale is sung.

› When morning paints the orient skies,

Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; &c.] In the original here, he enumerates the many epithets of beauty, borrowed from roses, which were used by the poets, rapa тwv σopwv. We see that poets were dignified in Greece with the title of sages: even the careless Anacreon, who lived but for love and voluptuousness, was called by Plato the wise Anacreon -fait hæc sapientia quondam."

* Preserves the cold inurned clay, &c.] He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming; and, perhaps, (as Barnes thinks) to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector.-Homer's Iliad. It may likewise regard the ancient practice of putting garlands of roses on the dead, as in Statins, Theb. lib. x. 762.

-hi sertis, n. veris honore soluto

Accumulant artus, patriâque in sede reponunt
Corpus odoratum.

Where "veris honor," though it mean every kind of flowers, may seem more particularly to refer to the rose, which our poet in another ode calls tapos peλnpa. We read, in the Hieroglyphics of Pierius, lib. lv., that some of the ancients used to order in their wills, that roses should be annually scattered on their tombs, and Pierius has adduced some sepalchral inscriptions to this purpose.

* And mocks the vestige of decay:] When he says that this flower prevails over time itself, he still alludes to its efficacy in embalmment, (tenerà poneret ossa rosâ. Propert. lib. i. eleg. 17.) or perhaps to the subsequent idea of its fragrance surviving its beauty; for he can scarcely mean to praise for duration the "nimium breves flores" of the rose. Philostratus compares this flower with love, and says, that they both defy the influence of time; Xpovov de ovrs Epws, voi jača vičev. Unfortunately the similitude lies not in their duration, but their transience.

4 Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath

Diffuses odor even in death!] Thus Casper Barlæus, in his Eitus Nuptiarum:

When, humid, from the silvery stream,
Effusing beauty's warmest beam,
Venus appear'd, in flushing hues,
Mellow'd by ocean's briny dews;
When, in the starry courts above,
The pregnant brain of mighty Jove
Disclosed the nymph of azure glance,

The nymph who shakes the martial lance ;-
Then, then, in strange eventful hour,
The earth produced an infant flower,
Which sprung, in blushing glories dress'd,
And wanton'd o'er its parent breast.
The gods beheld this brilliant birth,
And hail'd the Rose, the boon of earth!
With nectar drops, a ruby tide,
The sweetly orient buds they dyed,$
And bade them bloom, the flowers divie
Of him who gave the glorious vine;
And bade them on the spangled thorn
Expand their bosoms to the morn.

ODE LVI.

HE, who instructs the youthful crew To bathe them in the brimmer's dew,

Ambrosium late rosa tunc quoque spargit odorem,
Cum fluit, aut multo languida sole jacet.
Nor then the rose its odor loses,

When all its flushing beauties die;
Nor less ambrosial balm diffuses,
When wither'd by the solar eye.
With nectar drops, a ruby tide,

The sweetly orient buds they dyed, &c.] The author of the "Pervigilium Veneris" (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the labored luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adonis

-rosa

Fuse aprino de cruore

according to the emendation of Lipsius. In the following epigram this hue is differently accounted for :

Illa quidem studiosa suum defendere Adonim,
Gradivus stricto quem petit ense ferox,
Affixit duris vestigia cæca rosetis,
Albaque divino picta cruore rosa est.
While the enamor'd queen of joy
Flies to protect her lovely boy,

On whom the jealous war-god rushes;
She treads upon a thorned rose,

And while the wound with crimson flows,

The snowy flow'ret feels her blood, and blushes: "Compare with this elegant ode the verses of Uz, lib. i. 'die Weinlese.'"-Degen.

This appears to be one of the hymns which were sung at the anniversary festival of the vintage; one of the cytot buvot, as our poet himself terms them in the fifty-ninth ode. We cannot help feeling a sort of reverence for these classic relics of the religion of antiquity. Horace may be supposed to have written the nineteenth ode of his second book, and the twenty-firth of the third, for some bacchanalian celebration of this kind.

And taste, uncloy'd by rich excesses,
All the bliss that wine possesses;
He, who inspires the youth to bound
Elastic through the dance's round,—
Bacchus, the god again is here,
And leads along the blushing year;
The blushing year with vintage teems,
Ready to shed those cordial streams,
Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,
Illuminate the sons of earth!'

Then, when the ripe and vermil wine,—
Blest infant of the pregnant vine,
Which now in mellow clusters swells,—
Oh! when it bursts its roseate cells,
Brightly the joyous stream shall flow,
To balsam every mortal wo!

None shall be then cast down or weak,
For health and joy shall light each cheek;
No heart will then desponding sigh,
For wine shall bid despondence fly.
Thus till another autumn's glow
Shall bid another vintage flow.

ODE LVII.3

WHOSE was the artist hand that spread
Upon this disk the ocean's bed?"
And, in a flight of fancy, high

1 Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,

Illuminate the sons of earth!] In the original TOTOV αστονον κομιζων. Madame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. Th's nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Meré, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See Bayle, art. Heléne.

2 This ode is a very animated description of a picture of Venus on a discus, which represented the goddess in her first emergence from the waves. About two centuries after our poet wrote, the pencil of the artist Apelles embellished this subject, in his famous painting of the Venus Anadyomené, the model of which, as Pliny informs us, was the beautiful Campaspe, given to him by Alexander; though, according to Natalis Comes, lib. vii. cap. 16, it was Phryne who sat to Apelles for the face and breast of this Venus.

There are a few blemishes in the reading of the ode before us, which have influenced Faber, Heyne, Brunck, &c. to denounce the whole poem as spurious. But, "non ego paucis offendar maculis." I think it is quite beautiful enough to be authentic.

3 Whose was the artist hand that spread

Upon this disk the ocean's bed?] The abruptness of apa τις τόρευσε ποντον is finely expressive of sudden admiration, and is one of those beauties which we cannot but admire in their source, though, by frequent imitation, they are now become familiar and unimpressive.

As aught on earthly wing can fly, Depicted thus, in semblance warm, The Queen of Love's voluptuous form Floating along the silv'ry sea

In beauty's naked majesty!

Oh! he hath given th' enamor'd sight
A witching banquet of delight,
Where, gleaming through the waters cle
Glimpses of undream'd charms appear,
And all that mystery loves to screen,
Fancy, like Faith, adores unseen.*

Light as the leaf, that on the breeze
Of summer skims the glassy seas,
She floats along the ocean's breast,
Which undulates in sleepy rest;
While stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the heaving billows.
Her bosom, like the dew-wash'd rose,"
Her neck, like April's sparkling snows,
Illume the liquid path she traces,
And burn within the stream's embraces.
Thus on she moves, in languid pride,
Encircled by the azure tide,

As some fair lily o'er a bed
Of violets bends its graceful head.

Beneath their queen's inspiring glance, The dolphins o'er the green sea dance, Bearing in triumph young Desire," And infant Love with smiles of fire!

And all that mystery loves to screen,

Fancy, like Faith, adores unseen, &c.] The pi has all the delicate character of the semi-reduc and affords a happy specimen of what the poetry ought to be-glowing but through a veil, and stea the heart from concealment. Few of the anci attained this modesty of description, which, like t cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, is imp every beam but that of fancy.

Her bosom, like the dew-wash'd rose, &c.] (says an anonymous annotator) is a whimsical e the bosom." Neither Catullus nor Gray have be opinion. The former has the expression, En hic in roseis latet papillis;

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

While, glittering through the silver waves,
The tenants of the briny caves
Around the pomp their gambols play,
And gleam along the watery way.

ODE LVIII.1

WHEN Gold, as fleet as zephyr's pinion,
Escapes like any faithless minion,
And flies me, (as he flies me ever,)"
Do I pursue him? never, never!
No, let the false deserter go,

For who could court his direst foe?
But, when I feel my lighten❜d mind
No more by grovelling gold confined,
Then loose I all such clinging cares,
And cast them to the vagrant airs.
Then feel I, too, the Muse's spell,
And wake to life the dulcet shell,
Which, roused once more, to beauty sings,
While love dissolves along the strings!

But scarcely has my heart been taught How little Gold deserves a thought, When, lo! the slave returns once more, And with him wafts delicious store

Of racy wine, whose genial art

In slumber seals the anxious heart.

Again he tries my soul to sever

From love and song, perhaps forever!

Away, deceiver! why pursuing
Ceaseless thus my heart's undoing?
Sweet is the song of amorous fire,
Sweet the sighs that thrill the lyre;
Oh! sweeter far than all the gold

Thy wings can waft, thy mines can hold.
Well do I know thy arts, thy wiles-

They wither'd Love's young wreathed smiles;
And o'er his lyre such darkness shed,

I thought its soul of song was fled!
They dash'd the wine-cup, that, by him,
Was fill'd with kisses to the brim.*
Go-fly to haunts of sordid men,
But come not near the bard again.
Thy glitter in the Muse's shade,
Scares from her bower the tuneful maid;
And not for worlds would I forego
That moment of poetic glow,
When my full soul, in Fancy's stream,
Pours o'er the lyre its swelling theme.
Away, away! to worldlings hence,
Who feel not this diviner sense;
Give gold to those who love that pest,-
But leave the poet poor and blest.

ODE LIX.5

RIPEN'D by the solar beam,
Now the ruddy clusters teem,
In osier baskets borne along
By all the festal vintage throng

1I have followed Barnes's arrangement of this ode, which, though deviating somewhat from the Vatican MS., appears to me the more natural order.

When Gold, as fleet as zephyr's pinion,

Escapes like any faithless minion, &c.] In the original Ο δραπέτης ὁ Xovous. There is a kind of pun in these words, as Madame Dacier has already remarked; for Chrysos, which signifies gold, was also a frequent name for a slave. In one of Lucian's dialogues, there is, I think, a similar play upon the word, where the followers of Chrysippus are called piden fishes. The puns of the ancients are, in general, even more vapid than our own; some of the best are those recorded of Diogenes.

1 And flies me, (as he flies me ever,) &c.] Aɛi d', aɛɩ μe povy. This grace of iteration has already been taken notice of Though sometimes merely a playful beauty, it is pecularly expressive of impassioned sentiment, and we may easily believe that it was one of the many sources of that energetic sensibility which breathed through the style of Sappho. See Gyrald. Vet. Poet. Dial. 9. It will not be said that this is a mechanical ornament by any one who can feel its charm in those lines of Catullus, where he complains of the infidelity of his mistress, Lesbia:

Cœli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,

Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam,
Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
Nunc, &c.

Si sic omnia dixisset!-but the rest does not bear citation.

▲ They dash'd the wine-cup, that, by him,
Was fill'd with kisses to the brim.] Original:-

Φιλημάτων δε κείνων,

Πυθών κυπελλκ κίρνης.

Horace has "Desiderique temperare poculum," not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importing the lovephiltres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favorite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim :"Or leave a kiss within the cup,

And I'll not ask for wine."

As in Ben Jonson's translation from Philostratus; and Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea, “ Ίνα και πίνης ἁμα Kai pians," "that you may at once both drink and kiss."

The title Entλnvios buvos, which Barnes has given to this ode, is by no means appropriate. We have already had one of those hymns, (ode 56,) but this is a description of the vintage; and the title is ovov, which it bears in the Vatican MS., is more correct than any that have been suggested.

Degen, in the true spirit of literary skepticism, doubts that this ode is genuine, without assigning any reason for such a suspicion;-" non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare." But this is far from being satisfactory criticism.

Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Ripe as the melting fruits they bear.
Now, now they press the pregnant grapes,
And now the captive stream escapes,
In fervid tide of nectar gushing,
And for its bondage proudly blushing!
While, round the vat's impurpled brim,
The choral song, the vintage hymn
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Steals on the charm'd and echoing air.
Mark, how they drink, with all their eyes,
The orient tide that sparkling flies,
The infant Bacchus, born in mirth,
While Love stands by, to hail the birth.

When he, whose verging years decline
As deep into the vale as mine,
When he inhales the vintage-cup,
His feet, new-wing'd, from earth spring up,
And as he dances, the fresh air

Plays whispering through his silvery hair.
Meanwhile young groups whom love invites,
To joys e'en rivalling wine's delights,
Seek, arm in arm, the shadowy grove,
And there, in words and looks of love,
Such as fond lovers look and say,
Pass the sweet moonlight hours away.1

ODE LX.

AWAKE to life, my sleeping shell,
To Phœbus let thy numbers swell;
And though no glorious prize be thine,
No Pythian wreath around thee twine,
Yet every hour is glory's hour

To him who gathers wisdom's flower.
Then wake thee from thy voiceless slumbers,
And to the soft and Phrygian numbers,

Which, tremblingly, my lips repeat, Send echoes from thy chord as sweet. "Tis thus the swan, with fading notes, Down the Cayster's current floats, While amorous breezes linger round, And sigh responsive sound for sound.

Muse of the Lyre! illume my dream, Thy Phoebus is my fancy's theme; And hallow'd is the harp I bear, And hallow'd is the wreath I wear, Hallow'd by him, the god of lays, Who modulates the choral maze. I sing the love which Daphne twined Around the godhead's yielding mind; I sing the blushing Daphne's flight From this ethereal son of Light; And how the tender, timid maid Flew trembling to the kindly shade,' Resign'd a form, alas, too fair, And grew a verdant laurel there; Whose leaves, with sympathetic thrill, In terror seem'd to tremble still! The god pursued, with wing'd desire; And when his hopes were all on fire, And when to clasp the nymph he thought A lifeless tree was all he caught; And, stead of sighs that pleasure heaves, Heard but the west-wind in the leaves!

But, pause, my soul, no more, no more Enthusiast, whither do I soar? This sweetly-madd'ning dream of soul Hath hurried me beyond the goal. Why should I sing the mighty darts Which fly to wound celestial hearts, When ah, the song, with sweeter tone, Can tell the darts that wound my own? Still be Anacreon, still inspire The descant of the Teian lyre:*

1 Those well acquainted with the original need hardly be reminded that, in these few concluding verses, I have thought right to give only the general meaning of my author, leaving the details untouched.

This hymn to Apollo is supposed not to have been written by Anacreon; and it is undoubtedly rather a sublimer flight than the Teian wing is accustomed to soar. But, in a poet of whose works so small a proportion has reached us. diversity of style is by no means a safe criterion. If we knew Horace but as a satirist, should we easily believe there could dwell such animation in his lyre? Suidas says that our poet wrote hymns, and this perhaps is one of them. We can perceive in what an altered and imperfect state his works are at present, when we find a scholiast upon Horace citing an ode from the third book of Anacreon.

3 And how the tender, timid maid

Flew trembling to the kindly shade, &c.] Original:

[blocks in formation]

Still let the nectar'd numbers float,
Distilling love in every note!

And when some youth, whose glowing soul
Has felt the Paphian star's control,
When he the liquid lays shall hear,
His heart will flutter to his ear,
And drinking there of song divins,
Banquet on intellectual wine!!

Time has shed its sweetest bloom,
All the future must be gloom.
This it is that sets me sighing;
Dreary is the thought of dying!
Lone and dismal is the road,
Down to Pluto's dark abode;
And, when once the journey's o'er,
Ah! we can return no more!"

ODE LXI.

YOUTH's endearing charms are fled;
Hoary locks deform my head;
Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,
All the flowers of life decay.
Withering age begins to trace
Sad memorials o'er my face;

fancy, be a charm which invites or deserves imitation, where shall we find such a guide as Anacreon? In morality, too, with some little reserve, we need not blush, I think, to follow in his footsteps. For, if his song be the language of his heart, though luxurious and relaxed, he was artless and benevolent; and who would not forgive a few irregularities, when atoned for by virtues so rare and so endearing? When we think of the sentiment in those lines:

Away! I hate the sland'rous dart,

Which steals to wound th' unwary heart, how many are there in the world, to whom we would wish 10 515. Τον Ανακρέοντα μίμου!

1 Here ends the last of the odes in the Vatican MS., whose authority helps to confirm the genuine antiquity of them all, though a few have stolen among the number, which we may besitate in attributing to Anacreon. In the little essay prefixed to this translation, I observed that Barnes has quoted this manuscript incorrectly, relying upon an imperfect copy of it which Isaac Vossius had taken. I shall just mention two or three instances of this inaccuracy-the first which occur to me. In the ode of the Dove, on the words IITεpotat straw, he says, "Vatican MS. overtaĝov, etiam Prisciano invito:" but the MS. reads ouvraλvw, with ovokιagw interlined. Degen too, on the same line, is somewhat in error. In the twenty-second ode of this series, line thirteenth, the MS. has revin with at interlined, and Barnes imputes to it the reading of revon. In the fifty-seventh, line twelfth, he professes to have preserved the reading of the 13. Αλαλημένη δ' επ' αυτή, while the latter has αλαλημένος avra. Almost all the other annotators have transplanted these errors from Barnes.

* The intrusion of this melancholy ode, among the careless levities of our poet, reminds us of the skeletons which the Egyptians used to hang up in their banquet-rooms, to inculcate a thought of mortality even amidst the dissipations of mirth. If it were not for the beauty of its numbers, the Tean Muse should disown this ode. Quid habet illius, las que spirabat amores ?"

To Stobers we are indebted for it.

Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,

[ocr errors]

All the flowers of life decay.] Horace often, with feeling and elegance, deplores the fugacity of human enjoyments. See book ii, ode 11; and thus in the second epistle, book

[ocr errors]

ODE LXII.6

FILL me, boy, as deep a draught,
As e'er was fill'd, as e'er was quaff'd ;
But let the water amply flow,
To cool the grape's intemperate glow ;'
Let not the fiery god be single,
But with the nymphs in union mingle.

Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes ;
Eripuere jocos, venerem, convivia, ludum.
The wing of every passing day
Withers some blooming joy away;

And wafts from our enamor'd arms

The banquet's mirth, the virgin's charms.

A Dreary is the thought of dying, &c.] Regnier, a libertine French poet, has written some sonnets on the approach of death, full of gloomy and trembling repentance. Chaulieu, however, supports more consistently the spirit of the Epicurean philosopher. See his poem, addressed to the Marquis de Lafare

Plus j'approche du terme et moins je le redoute, &c.

And, when once the journey's o'er,

Ah! we can return no more!] Scaliger, upon Catullus's well-known lines, "Qui nunc it per iter, &c." remarks that Acheron, with the same idea, is called aveodos by Theocritus, and dvoεkopoμos by Nicander.

• This ode consists of two fragments, which are to be found in Athenæus, book x., and which Barnes, from the similarity of their tendency, has combined into one. I think this a very justifiable liberty, and have adopted it in some other frag

ments of our poet.

[blocks in formation]
« PredošláPokračovať »